Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel Review

Another novelty is the option to command your soldiers in real-time even in combat situations. There was a similar feature in X-Com : Apocalypse where you could choose between turn-based and real-time gameplay, but this seems to be implemented far better here, as you can change between the modes in combat. The programmers wanted to make the game more dynamic and hence, more appealing to a larger number of players, which is probably why they decided to introduce this feature. Unfortunately, the real-time mode won't be too useful as your limitation to use only ten fingers (or in some extreme cases, and ten toes) at the same time will simply prevent you from issuing orders to all of your soldiers all the time. The same flaw haunted both Starship Troopers and Army Men 2, which implies that no one yet found a solution to make squad based games playable in real-time. So, I guess you'll have to switch between modes frequently, using the real-time mode to wander around the map, and the turn-based mode to fight. The battles will bring your strategic and tactical capabilities to full focus. Fallout Tactics will give you a pleasurable gameplay, which you could only see in the old UFO, but it will also require a lot of your time. The battlefields are enormous and the enemies come in hosts. This means that certain missions will take hours of your time. You can save your position at any time, BUT if you decide you don't need no stinkin' Save-games, you can turn that off at the beginning of the game, and your soldiers will receive 30% more EXPs. These 30% do sound tempting, but one wrong move after several hours of play can cost a lot of nerves. I'll leave that up to your masochistic little minds.

The graphics haven't changed substantially. You cannot expect much of a resolution from a 2D game, so that the 1024x768x32 seems really good. 3D acceleration will help to produce a better picture. Character animations are smooth, and the game is crammed with chopped limbs. If you're one of the people who cannot stand violence, you can just turn this off. The game also features a filter for naughty words. The cinematcs are really something - all from the intro to the ending sequence they look so impressive that they just make you progress through the game and eventually finish it.

The sound effects and the (barely ever appearing) music are also high quality. We already had some great voice acting in the old Fallouts, so we expected nothing less. The game supports Dolby and several 3D sound-positioning techniques.

The AI is not much. On lower difficulty, the enemies will hardly ever move, and they won't be too smart when you set the game to hard. Their strength is in their numbers, rather than in their wits. The members of your team aren't too well furnished in the brain department either - they will frequently get stuck in trying to find their way.

Multiplayer mode will let you set all the possible parameters to your heart's content, and try out playing non-human characters: you can choose from a wide variety of super mutants, death claw, humanoid robots and even a dog. Each race has its own upsides and downsides, so that the multiplayer mode should provide many more hours of fun.

And finally - the bugs. The retail version of the game exercises at times some wired inventory manipulation problems, and the 76Mb patch that appeared recently, apart from being a nominee for the largest game-patch in the world, insinuates that there may be some other things wrong with the game as well.

Fallout fans will appreciate the chance to cruise post-apocalyptic America's highways again, and the fans of turn-based strategies will also find something to their liking. If you don't belong to any of those groups, that just goes to say that you never played Fallout 1 and 2, so you better start off with them first. Or just start with playing Fallout Tactics. Whatever the case, you can't go wrong.